Electrical work boxes are utilized in buildings to distribute electrical power from the power supply to electrical devices such as outlets or switches. An electrical work box includes a metal or plastic housing containing a recess for electrical components such as wire outlets or switches. In addition, low voltage boxes are used for low voltage wiring for computer, telephone, and other low voltage electrical applications.
Presently, conventional electrical boxes are referred to colloquially either new work boxes, for new building construction, or old work boxes, for retrofitting into existing buildings. New work boxes have protruding accessory exterior sheaths for nailing the new work boxes to exposed wood or metal studs within a building. However, because the screw or nail mounting brackets protrude up from the external silhouette shape of the work box, the brackets interfere with the flush mounting of the work box within a hole within a building wall. Moreover, old work boxes are frequently held in place by bent tabs which engage sheetrock boards thus minimizing stability, as the sheetrock is prone to gradually falling apart.
Existing electrical work boxes are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,406 of Slater and U.S. Pat. No. 4,436,952 of Lockwood.
Lockwood '952 describes a work box with a conventional accessory screw holding bracket protruding up from the surface of one of the walls of the work box. The protruding bracket interferes with the flush placement of the work box within a hole within a wall corresponding in shape to the exterior of the work box.
Slater '406 describes a work box in general but is silent about a mounting means for the work box.
An improvement in electrical work boxes is shown in Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,093 of Herth and Davis, which describes an electrical work box for new work and old work, wherein a novel attachment is described for vertically attaching the electrical work box to a building stud via an angled screw mount within the electrical work box.
However, Herth and Davis '093 does not describe a horizontally oriented electrical work box which can be mounted horizontally to a vertical wall stud.